Next month, researchers, policymakers, ethicists and social scientists will meet in Hong Kong for the second International Summit on Human Gene Editing.

Since the first summit, held in Washington DC nearly three years ago, researchers have continued to apply the versatile gene-editing technology CRISPR–Cas9 to diverse domains — from crop enhancement and pest eradication to human disease. Many have flagged the ethical, economic and environmental concerns raised by manipulating plant and animal genomes, including our own. But, so far, governments have struggled to develop viable approaches to regulation.

A crucial part of the arsenal for shaping the future of gene editing is hiding in plain sight: the patent system.

In the past, patents have played an important part in regulating new technologies and research, from the atom bomb to work involving human embryonic stem cells. Some organizations and individual researchers using CRISPR–Cas9 are already creating licensing agreements that reflect their own moral codes. In my view, government-driven efforts centred on national patent systems should be deployed to help regulate gene editing.

Last year’s heritable human gene editing scandal continues to reverberate. He Jiankui remains under investigation in China, where authorities have confirmed his work but the extent of his punishment remains unclear, possibly because of some ambiguity in the applicable regulations. He has definitely been fired by his university.

In the US, both Rice University and Stanford are formally investigating faculty members whose involvement with the work may have been more extensive than first thought. Michael Deem of Rice was revealed...

After the heritable human gene editing headlines of late 2018, and considering that the stakes include the future of human biology and the prospect of a new high-tech eugenics, it is no surprise that discussions have continued. What was not widely anticipated, however, was the emergence of a connection between old-school transhumanism, mutated into biohacking, and modern cryptocurrency, in the service of monetizing “the production of designer babies and human germline genetic engineering.”

A Chinese researcher recently disrupted the CCR5 gene, which builds a protein that acts as an entryway that HIV uses to gain entry to T-cells, allegedly creating the world’s first genetically engineered baby. Chinese officials moved swiftly to condemn the...